SCJP 5.0 BETA Certification Exam

[Jed Cousin]

When is it expected that SCJP 5.0 will go final? Spring 2005? Summer? How quickly does Sun typically move from Beta exam/cert. to final?

jmc

[Jim Yingst]

The final version of SCJP 1.5 should be out in early April, I believe.

[Ed Schepis]

Just a question: I've partecipated to the blueprint survey for SCJP 5.0, but not yet received the voucher... did they already sent to survey participants? How could I ask for it?

Thanks

[Joyce Lee]

Originally posted by Ed Schepis:
Just a question: I've partecipated to the blueprint survey for SCJP 5.0, but not yet received the voucher... did they already sent to survey participants? How could I ask for it?

Thanks

A similar question was posted in this recent thread.

[Pradeep bhatt]

Originally posted by Barry Gaunt:
Ko Ko, real programmers don't go when they have to write code, they go:

So will there be some code to write in the exam so that we go

[Mark Spritzler]

Originally posted by Pradeep Bhat:


So will there be some code to write in the exam so that we go

Sort of, there are the drag and drop questions which you have to put the correct code snippets into the full code to get it to work corerctly. These are fun.

Mark

[Dave Knipp]

Originally posted by Vedhas Pitkar:
By making the Beta paid,Sun has disheartened me.I was preapring seriously for the Beta,but $49 is too much for me(just for a Beta).In this case, I will wait until the Final exam is released & the give the Real thing.Why waste 4 hrs on a beta?

I agree with this statement. THe point of the beta is help Sun out and for them to make it free to all those that do. You shouldn't have to pay for a product that hasn't been released...

On the other hand I do understand that if you have to pay you will get a better pool of individuals taking the beta. This will in turn give you better results on the exam.

In my opinion the $50 is too much for me to take a beta exam and I like many others will wait for the full version and the new HF book I love those books!!

just my 2 cents.

[Nicholas Cheung]

In my opinion the $50 is too much for me to take a beta exam and I like many others will wait for the full version

$150 is much more than $50 for me, and thus, I choose to take the beta.

Nick

[Kevin Mangold]

Nick, I hate to say it. But if your boss constantly needs you to keep on getting every new certification that comes out that shows that he doesn't have much reason to keep you working for him without them.

[Kevin Mangold]

And the Java 1.5 Developers Notebook is NOT a good book to get. It is very poorly worded and I have found many mistakes. There are many parts that you need to read many times over to understand what he is trying to say, because he didn't proofread what he wrote.

[Barry Gaunt]

"he didn't proofread what he wrote"

I don't think anybody did. It's a mess of a book.

[Nicholas Cheung]

But if your boss constantly needs you to keep on getting every new certification that comes out that shows that he doesn't have much reason to keep you working for him without them.

I agree, but that's life.

Just wanna to gain some more experiences here, learn the latest technologies, and then move to another career stage.

Nick

[Nicholas Cheung]

That's why I read Core Java and Complete Reference instead of that book.

[Danut Prisacaru]

Any news about exam simulations?

[E Pease]

I was under the impression that if you passed the SCJP 5 Beta test you were fully certified in Java 1.5. Why is it better to take the final exam. I thought I would take the beta instead of the SCJP 1.4 exam because IF I failed it would only be $50. However, WHEN I pass I would have a more up to date certification and I would not have to wait 2 - 6 more months. Is this the wrong way to think of this? Should I just wait for final SCJP 5 to come out?

Thanks

[Nicholas Cheung]

Any news about exam simulations?

You mean exam simulators for SCJP Tiger?

If so, you probably need to wait, because the author will first take the exam, taste it (question style and level of difficulty), and then can start prepare it. It is obvious that, even if currently there are any simulator releases, it might not be similar to real exam because SCJP Tiger has changed a lot, in both sytle and level of difficulty.

Nick

[Nicholas Cheung]

I thought I would take the beta instead of the SCJP 1.4 exam because IF I failed it would only be $50. However, WHEN I pass I would have a more up to date certification and I would not have to wait 2 - 6 more months.

That's true, and it is one of the major motivations of mine too.
But I hope that I could pass it in one take, and thus, you need to prepare extensively, and cover as much as contents as possible.

Nick

[Danut Prisacaru]

Originally posted by Nicholas Cheung:

You mean exam simulators for SCJP Tiger?

If so, you probably need to wait, because the author will first take the exam, taste it (question style and level of difficulty), and then can start prepare it. It is obvious that, even if currently there are any simulator releases, it might not be similar to real exam because SCJP Tiger has changed a lot, in both sytle and level of difficulty.

Nick

Yes, I meant exam simulators.

If it is that different maybe I'll wait for the final exam. I do not have time to study for the beta. Some exam simulators and a couple of good books might help me.

Danut
MCSD.NET Charter Member
SCJP 1.4
MCAD.NET Early Achiever
MCDBA (SQL2K)
MCSD (VC6++)
MCP

[Saliya Jinadasa]

If I were a hiring manager I would be concerned hiring someone having too many certifications. It might show either you are having too much time for studies and not much time for work.

Having gainded few SUN certifications myself I stopped taking anymore certifications. From my experience certifications only helps you to gain some theoretical knowledge. Knowing theory does not mean you are a good progremmer/developer either. None of my colleagues have certifications but they are hardcore programmers and have indepth knowledge on JAVA and J2EE stuff.

------
Saliya

[Danut Prisacaru]

Originally posted by Saliya Jinadasa:
If I were a hiring manager I would be concerned hiring someone having too many certifications. It might show either you are having too much time for studies and not much time for work.

Having gainded few SUN certifications myself I stopped taking anymore certifications. From my experience certifications only helps you to gain some theoretical knowledge. Knowing theory does not mean you are a good progremmer/developer either. None of my colleagues have certifications but they are hardcore programmers and have indepth knowledge on JAVA and J2EE stuff.

------
Saliya

You are right. It is not enough to have one or more certifications but studying for certification it helps. It did in my case. For example I did not know much about databases before I started to study for MCDBA. It took me months and I went into a lot of details. Now I can even do database design and other things (tuning, write sprocs, triggers) even better than other people who were hired to be DBAs.

I think that certification helps you learn the basics. There were several cases in my career where I just remembered some things. I did not have to search a lot to figure out how to do things.

Studying for certification is like getting a degree. I know many smart people without a BS in CS but there are mising something. In college you do lots of basics things that help you undestand the basics and not waste time after that investigating them.

There is another case where I think it helps to have certifications: Software Architect. You need to know a little from everything to understand the system as a whole, the technologies and make good decisions.

Danut

[Shankar Narayenen]

Hello all,

I took the BETA version of SCJP 5.0 and I should say it was a long and difficult test. The good part was there were interesting drag n drop questions and you don't get to see the results immediately .

Does anyone know when will Sun publish / mail the results to the test takers?

Good luck to all those who are planning / preparing to take the test.

-Shankar

SCJP 1.4
SCBCD 1.3
SCWCD 1.4
SCEA Part I
SCJP 5.0 (Waiting for the results)
[ January 27, 2005: Message edited by: Shankar Narayenen ]

[Nicholas Cheung]

Does anyone know when will Sun publish / mail the results to the test takers?

Received via mail on 8-10 weeks after the beta exam concluded.

Nick

[Zhi Xiang Yong]

Originally posted by Pradeep Bhat:


Thanks for the info. I am very happy.

What is the Blueprint survey you all talking here?

[Joyce Lee]

Hi,

What is the Blueprint survey you all talking here?

Check out this thread.

Joyce

[vasu maj]

Originally posted by Nicholas Cheung:

I found Cay's Core Java series 7th edition is quite good for learning Tiger. If you could, you might also read JLS for the new sections added to Tiger.

Nick

Do both books cover 5.0 features or only the advanced ( vol 2) ?

Thanks,

Vasu

[Marcus Green]

I am curious about the drag and drop questions. Are the words dragged into the location where they should be in the code, or on some separate "answer line"?
Marcus

[Ko Ko Naing]

Originally posted by vasu maj:


Do both books cover 5.0 features or only the advanced ( vol 2) ?

Thanks,

Vasu

Right, both Core Java, 7th edition and latest JLS covers 5.0 features...

[Vincent Brabant]

Do both books cover 5.0 features or only the advanced ( vol 2) ?

Thanks,

Vasu

Vol 1 is also cover 5.0 features.
Chapter 3 is speaking about enums, Scanner, printf,
Chapter 5 use generic annotation in their codes's examples, and speak about autoboxing, ...
Chapter 13 covers Generics.

[Jim Yingst]

[Marcus]: I am curious about the drag and drop questions. Are the words dragged into the location where they should be in the code, or on some separate "answer line"?

Generally you drap word (or code fragments) to where they should be in the code. I think there are also a few where there may be no code, but you match up one series of options with another series. E.g.

Match up the following:

1) do [ ]
2) re [ ]
3) mi [ ]
4) fa [ ]

a) a drop of golden sun
b) a long, long way to run
c) a name I call myself
d) a deer - a female deer

You'd have to drag a) to 2), b) to 4), c) to 3), and d) to 1).

[Ravish Narayanan]

HI all,
This is my first post.After seeing all you had given valuable comments, I couldnot stop myself writing.

(deleted actual exam info)

Remember - you cant get certitied in this exam, just by studying one month of any Java Book. You need to be practical. There were so many questions to complete a class, by dragging lines of code, which were given unordered.In Generics, there were questions about wild card usage, especially "? extends" notation and "? super" notation. I think I might get very less for threading questions - too hard and a play with ExecuterService, Lock class etc. There were questions on creating PriorityQueue with your own Comparable. There were questions for completing import statements, given a directory diagram of some classes.(deleted actual exam info info)
There were questions on how you use java -classpath option. Many on type casting.
Well, I learned the "Java 1.5 Tiger - A Developer Notebook" by Flanagan (Oreilly).

Hence please start writing code, I learned each concept by writing code and experimenting the output.That should be the way to prepare for TIGER.
Well, hoping for the best to hear the good news from Sun within 8-10 weeks. At the end of the exam, they will say "Results will be mailed to you".

And that is it. Please write to me at [email protected] for some sample code I had written for illustrating concepts of Generics, Enum etc. May be useful, and all the best.

I will let all you know if I get Tiger Cert.

Best regards,
Ravi

(Posting parts of the exam is in violation of the agreement you made with Sun on taking the beta examination!)
[ February 13, 2005: Message edited by: Barry Gaunt ]

[Harvey Tsang]

I took the SCJP for Java 5 beta exam this morning. I have not been to this site since my previous Java beta exam - SCJWS - until - just now, so I did not know that the deadline for the exam has changed, which made me take the exam even though I was not well-prepared. But anyway, as it is the past, it is over.

Back to talking about the exam, it is a very long long day to me. I have previously taken other Java beta exam, such as SCWCD, SCBCD and SCJWS, but this one is the most time-consuming exam among all. 5 hours for the exam, I nearly used it all, I did not have enough time to review the exam even once, while I was able to review at least that much in other exams. Some point of time, I even thought of giving up, some time after the second hour has passed, though I did not finally. I hope that I am able to slip through it though, otherwise, I will be very upset especially after I know the deadline of the exam is extended now.

As the exam is still in beta status, it is not good for me to review any questions I have tested in here. Just share what I have read when doing my revision.

As said by other reviewers, the exam covers a lot more than that in the SCJP for Java 1.4, led by generics and other language changes. Therefore, I went to the Java 5 documentation page first and looked for new language features at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/language/index.html. It contains introduction to generics, enum, autoboxing/unboxing, etc. All those (except annotations) are useful. Take special care to generics, inside which contains a detailed tutorial. The tutorial is good, giving me a lot of insight that I previously did not notice how difficult this new construct is.

Next, it is the Collection framework, which I did not revise well in my Java 1.4 exam. So I read the enhancement for 1.4 and 5.0 in http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/collections/index.html.

Others that I have paid attention to and the exam did ask are regular expression and the new StringBuilder, Scanner and Formatter class. And some I have not paid attention to but the exam has asked are text formatting (date and number), threads, classpath setting and JAR file, serialization. I hope I do not lose a lot of points in them. Maybe there are more topics, but I forget it already, as I am feeling relieved now.

Even though the coverage is more than last version of SCJP, but what I feel after the exam is reading the Java documentation mentioned earlier, along with some programming experience - you really have to (I have, but not the Java 1.4 and 5 features), since I was scratching my head some time because I did not even think of such weird situations when reading the examples in the tutorial, especially in autoboxing/unboxing, method overloading/overriding, class/object structures along with others I do not want to specify in here (because it would be too detailed if so).

Good luck to all, who have and have not already taken the exam!

Regards,
Harvey Tsang.
[ February 12, 2005: Message edited by: Harvey Tsang ]

[Nicholas Cheung]

Ravish,

I am afraid you are posting too much information about the exam questions. It is illegal to do so here because this violates the policy of Javaranch! Please remove the content regarded to the real questions, and please, do NOT distribute the real questions as well.

Nick

[Doug Porter]

One thing that I think would be great to see once all of the Beta results have been compiled would be a breakdown of test takers.

Total Takers of the Beta
Breakdown by Country
Breakdown by State (in the US) or any other sub grouping of country
Percentage passing the Beta
etc.

[Nicholas Cheung]

What you will get is your own result. You will not receive anything more than that. All information will keep secret, except the passing score of beta.

Nick

[ankur rathi]

Hi Ravi & Harvey ,
Thanks for such a long & useful post .

Best of luck .
bye , have a nice time .

[Ravish Narayanan]

Hi Nick,

Yeah, I was not awrae of the policy. Sorry for that and thanks for removing the info related to exam, thanks

Regards,
Ravi

[Danut Prisacaru]

Great exam!!!

I loved the drag and drop and OOP related questions.

I did not like the fact that on drag and drop you can't go back/edit your answer. If you go back then you have to start from scratch. Why is that?

Overall, kudos for SUN for a much better exam than 1.4

Thanks!
Danut

[Nicholas Cheung]

I did not like the fact that on drag and drop you can't go back/edit your answer. If you go back then you have to start from scratch. Why is that?

I guess the software might have some problems to store the state of the DND components, and thus, it does not allow us to review those DND questions.

Nick

[Danut Prisacaru]

Originally posted by Nicholas Cheung:

I guess the software might have some problems to store the state of the DND components, and thus, it does not allow us to review those DND questions.

Nick

Maybe it has an issue restoring the state. It has to save the state correctly otherwise they would have lost our answers, right?

Danut
"Maybe SCJP 1.5"

[Danut Prisacaru]

Is there going to be a new exam for SUN CERTIFIED DEVELOPER FOR THE JAVA 2 PLATFORM?

Thanks!
Danut